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“Considering the minor in question, I doubt we’d be contributing much.” Lisa Livia forked up more omelet. “I think he’s fully funded his juvie trust. This omelet is really good.”
The phone rang and Agnes answered it and then heard silence.
“Hello?” she said, and then Brenda said, “Agnes. I was just calling to see if Lisa Livia was all right. We had a disagreement and?—”
“She’s right here,” Agnes said, thinking you treacherous bitch.
“That’s all right, then,” Brenda said. “As long as she’s safe. Everything okay out there?”
“Yep,” Agnes said. “Wedding’s on schedule. Everything’s fine. Here’s LL.” She held out the phone to Lisa Livia. “Your mother.”
LL rolled her eyes and took the phone. “Hello, Ma. Yes, I’m fine. Agnes gave me my old bedroom back. Just like old times. What? Yes, I know it isn’t like old times unless you’re here, but Agnes is making me breakfast, so it’s damn near. Okay.” She frowned at the phone and then handed it back to Agnes. “I have no idea what that was about, but she cut me off and hung up on me when she heard you were making me breakfast. Jealous much?”
“I really don’t care.” Agnes dropped butter into the omelet pan for her own breakfast and watched it melt. “Listen, Garth is not a juvenile delinquent. He’s really smart. I know he’s not educated,” she said when Lisa Livia looked like she was about to sneer, “but he’s a fast learner, he’s picked up everything that Doyle has thrown at him so far, and he was amazing with the flamingos. I bet his mama was smart. That whole naming him Garth because of the ‘Shameless’ song makes her sound like our kind of people, you know? And when it comes to cunning, you can’t put anything past a Thibault. I’m thinking Garth could really be something if he gets a chance. And good clothes are a start, give him some pride.”
“Oh, God.” Lisa Livia sighed. “You’re going to save Garth.”
“I am not.” Agnes poured her eggs into the melted butter. “But it’s not exactly saving a kid to make sure he gets to go to high school. Come on, LL. And if he wants to live here in the barn as a caretaker where there’s heat and plumbing and a computer for his homework, and his grandfather says it’s okay, then I don’t see the problem.”
“He’s a teenaged boy,” Lisa Livia said. “Try sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”
Agnes shook her head. “Like he wasn’t going to get those in the swamp. At least here he’ll go to hell with the Internet and hot water.”
“Okay,” Lisa Livia said. “I’ll put Palmer on the clothes. It’ll give him something to do. Grooms are useless before a wedding anyway. But you’re not fooling me—you just like feeding him. You like having a lot of people milling around that you can cook for. If you could get Cerise and Hot Pink up here, life would be perfect.”
Agnes grinned at her, feeling all sunny and warm inside around the dark hollow parts she was trying not to look at. “You know as hellish as this week has been, and even considering I have to wait until last to get my omelet, this has been the happiest I’ve ever been. I mean people are trying to kill me, but this house is full of the best people and they’re all eating my food and watching out for me and ... I’m happy. Is that crazy?”
“Maybe,” Lisa Livia said. “But I’m loving the omelet, so I’m not arguing.”
“I like having you here,” Agnes said, throwing grated cheese onto her eggs. “I like it that Joey shows up every day and that Carpenter wanders through and that Garth is putting in hydrangeas right now even though he has no receipts.”
“And?” Lisa Livia said.
“And what?” Agnes said, keeping her eyes on her eggs.
“Shane,” Lisa Livia said. “God, are you transparent”
“Shane.” Agnes nodded. “He’s a good friend, but that has to be it I mean, he’s a hitman, and I’m giving up violence, and he’s never going to be stable, and my next guy is going to be permanent, a nice regular guy, you know? But Shane’s a good guy, a good friend.” She caught Lisa Livia looking at her with contempt. “What?”
“You’re insane, that’s what”
“I don’t see why that’s insane. I think that’s a good plan. Dr. Garvin would approve.”
“No, you’re insane.” Lisa Livia cut into her omelet again. “There’s nobody I’d go to faster in a crisis, but you are nuts. And not in a cute way. You have been since I met you.”
Agnes looked at her, stunned. “I was fourteen when I met you.”
Lisa Livia nodded, chewing omelet. “And everybody in that damn boarding school was scared of you. You know what the first thing they told me was? Don’t make Agnes mad. Seniors told me that.”
Agnes looked down at her omelet and began to lift the edges automatically. “They said that? I thought they thought I was an untouchable because my dad and mom never came back.”
“They never got that far. Evidently something happened the first week you were there and they saw the red light in your eyes and you became legend. Anyway, by the end of the first week I was there, I knew exactly who you were. My kind of people. And I asked to be your roommate and here we are.”
Agnes swallowed. “They were afraid of me?”
“Agnes, it was a good thing,” Lisa Livia said. “Because otherwise, they’d have made your life hell because you had no parents and wore cheap clothes. Thank God they thought you were Carrie.”
“Oh, God.” Agnes turned off the heat under the omelet pan because she’d lost all concentration.
